For many British Muslims, the UK has become a hostile home Submitted by Khadijah Elshayyal on Wed, 12/17/2025 - 16:37 Dissenting voices are portrayed as subversive fifth columnists - and today's youth are well aware of the precarity of their citizenship Police officers stand guard amid a demonstration outside the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque in Liverpool, England, on 2 August 2024 (Ian Cooper/AFP) On Twenty-five years ago, as an A-level student with a deep interest in political affairs, I recall attending a Muslim community event where a lawyer was called to the stage to deliver an impromptu presentation on the newly introduced UK Terrorism Act 2000. He warned of the shift this new law entailed, taking anti-terrorism from the realm of emergency legislation to a primary legal framework, alongside its new focus on defining terrorism in relation to ideology, rather than conflict. This sounded chilling to me at the time, but there was also a sense of bewilderment in the room. I don’t think anyone in the audience could have imagined what the lasting implications would be - not just for freedom of expression, but also for the status of Muslims in the UK. Many of the groups proscribed by this act operated in the Muslim world, some from an overtly Islamic standpoint. What would this potential association of Muslim political agency with ideologically driven terrorism mean for Muslims? The following year, 9/11 happened, and its immediate fallout was felt viscerally across Muslim communities worldwide. A subject of much consternation within UK Muslim gatherings became the question of “do we have a future in this country?” Some who had been born and raised in the UK, making lives for themselves over many years, began to voice their concerns that it could never be a true home for their children or grandchildren. At a time when counter-terrorism legislation was explicitly pivoting to focus squarely on the Islamist folk devil, the worry was that entire communities would be scapegoated - that state overreach and draconian legislation would feed and exacerbate an atmosphere of suspicion, making life untenable for many Muslims of immigrant heritage in the UK. Memories of the Bosnian genocide were still fresh in people’s minds. Narrative of loyalty Muslim organisations and activists engaged with this question in various ways. Some invested strongly in developing a narrative and a political strategy around loyalty to the nation-state. The logic was that our communities have settled here for generations; this is our home, and we must emphatically embrace it as such. Many larger Muslim groups and institutions prioritised the goal of securing legitimacy among the general public over campaigning for victimised and beleaguered communities and individuals. Looking outwards to articulate that Islam and Muslims were unthreatening, indigenous and an asset to the nation was considered a more astute strategy in that moment - and one that would be more likely to secure stability and longevity under the existing political circumstances. Though initially shocking, with time, the idea of citizenship-stripping became a normalised feature of the home secretary's prerogative This approach was manifested by public awareness campaigns emphasising the relatability of Muslim neighbours, and exploring the long history of Islam in the UK, including Muslim service in the armed forces, in addition to highlighting the economic value of the “ Muslim pound ”. There was also much emphasis on articulating theological tools relating to a Muslim’s civic duty in a non-Muslim country. This included the obligation to honour our citizenship by obeying the laws of the land, and by deferring to prevailing social and political norms. There was a discourse about the obsolescence of classical territorial categorisations - we could, it was argued , consider the UK as “dar al-shahada”, the abode of testimony, and a place where despite its flaws, we had the rule of law and opportunities to practice our faith openly and safely. It followed, then, that Muslims should commit wholeheartedly, and for some, exclusively, to their British citizenship. After all, their countries of heritage were authoritarian dictatorships where religious agency and political dissent were often ruthlessly persecuted, with no recourse to due process or transparency. This intentional and overt drive to visibly demonstrate loyalty to the state, its history and its culture - to espouse a particular form of Britishness - hoped to resonate with and reassure the media and political establishment, both of which seemed incessantly fascinated by questioning where Muslims’ loyalties really lay. In short, we saw a politics of representation, respectability and reassurance. Islamophobic tropes Fast forward a decade, and by 2010, successive updates to terrorism legislation had enshrined into law restrictions on speech and expression, while expanding the security state’s reach in areas of surveillance and detention without charge. Notably, the 2010s were when we saw the emergence of mass citizenship-stripping, including on “public good” grounds - which, as a new report by the Runnymede Trust and Reprieve highlights, mainly affects Muslims of South Asian, Middle Eastern or North African descent. Though initially shocking, with time, the idea of citizenship-stripping became a normalised feature of the home secretary’s prerogative. The highest-profile cases have been the ones that the media and political establishments colluded to demonise in the public imagination, such as Abu Hamza al-Masri , and perhaps most prominently, Shamima Begum . Islamophobic tropes were used to portray both of these figures as monsters to the general public. They were caricatured on account of aspects of their visual appearance that were deemed unsavoury, threatening and alien. “ Captain Hook ” is how headlines portrayed Abu Hamza, and of course, Begum was adultified as a “jihadi bride” - a way of manufacturing public consent for draconian and authoritarian measures that would, in normal circumstances, have drawn incredulity for their erosion of the rule of law. Any and all Muslims caught up in the UK’s growing net of securitisation were now associated with these “monster” figures, and thus plausibly posed an ideological - nay, existential - threat that could be excluded if deemed appropriate by the state, leaving us with a two-tiered citizenship regime. Miles from reality A neutering of public and political attitudes was not the only byproduct of this regime. I have spent the past four years exploring and mapping out with colleagues aspects of the British Muslim digital landscape . In doing so, I have noted a significant number of influencers using social media to discuss and unpack notions of “hijra”. This Arabic term literally translates to 'migration', but is used by some to describe a move from an environment where hostility or persecution is experienced, to a location or community where they can more freely practice their faith - evoking the migration of the Prophet Muhammad and the early community of Muslims from Mecca to Madina. The subtext to these discourses is a sense that for many British Muslims, the UK is not the home they (or their parents) might have imagined it to be - and that it is wise to make an exit plan, just in case. Such plans have edged increasingly closer towards the category of when, not if. The idea that the UK offers safety and stability for a fulfilled life holds less purchase for many Muslims. I see this discourse in “how to” accounts, which offer step-by-step advice about locations, processes and procedures, dos and don’ts. But there are also theological and sociological discussions, unpacking and connecting historical moments, and offering advice to dual citizens about how to navigate hazards specific to their status. The normalising of Islamophobia in UK public life is fuelling hate and violence Read More » So the recent Runnymede/Reprieve report, which notes that people of colour are 12 times more likely than white Britons to be at risk of citizenship-stripping, is not met with alarm - but rather a jaded acknowledgement of what many British Muslims have already internalised. In 2025, many of the people languishing in UK prisons over their alleged participation in direct action against arms manufacturers supplying Israel’s genocide in Palestine , are the same ones who grew up in the shadow of this two-tiered regime. For them, the wider political context of draconian overreach and suspension of due process is not a scandalous aberration, as I and my fellow millennials might have viewed its precursors back in 2000. They, and other dissenting voices, are portrayed as subversive, anti-British fifth columnists - and they are thus well aware of the precarity of their status. Looking across the Atlantic, arbitrary arrests and harassment from US immigration officials underscore the sense that access to due process for Muslim citizens or residents in the West is not a matter of rights, but of political expediency. This generation is far less interested in demonstrating their palatability and agreeability to an establishment that has dehumanised them for political ends. Their parents’ strategies of representation, respectability and reassurance must seem a million miles distanced from their current reality. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. Islamophobia Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0